Who was the man in the iron mask?

[C. F. Leon]

If the Man in the Iron Mask (or Silk Mask in this case) was Louis XIVs father (who in this case was not Louis XIII but another man) and only the King and the prisoner knew this truth, then why hide his face since no one would recognized him as Louis XIVs real father?

There was a 3rd: Bénigne Dauvergne de Saint-Mars, who was the "keeper" of the jails that are involved. To understand the mystery, one must know about Saint-Mars. The prisoner was only referred to as "The (Saint-Mars') Ancient (Long-Time) Prisoner" during his imprisonment and was buried as "Macholy" (?spelling), although what we would call his Arrest Warrant survives and gives the name "Eustache Dauger" (or D'Auger). This name has been traced to a valet that was involved in "The Affair of the Poisons", which Louis 14's mistress Madame de Montespan was connected to. And in spite of the tales, the masked prisoner was TREATED as a valet, indeed he served as a valet to other prisoners.

Some of the correspondence concerning the prisoner survives, and this shows that when he was at the rural prison, he was NOT masked, but the orders were not to let him TALK to anyone, including the jailers. It is when he is transported to Paris that he wears a "velvet mask"*. And at the Bastille, where someone might recognize him. So the secret is not so much WHO he was, but what he KNEW that Louis didn't want revealed. Noone's theory is that Saint-Mars played this for all that it was worth as PR.

The two books that I recommend are:

- The Man Behind the Mask: The Real Story of the 'Ancient Prisoner'; Rupert Furneaux (1954)- follows the "Marcholly" idea
- The Man Behind the Iron Mask; John Noone (1988)- as above

* It is a "velvet mask" in the only contemporary eyewitness report that we have. The mask becomes a permanent one of iron in Voltaire's later writing (1771), which Dumas exploits in the 3rd volume of "Ten Years Later" (c 1847).